CPU Performance, Cont

Having taken a look at Snapdragon 820 and the Kryo CPU from an architectural perspective, let’s look at our higher level benchmarks. We’ll start as always with the web benchmarks.

Google Octane v2 (Stock Browser)

Kraken 1.1 (Stock Browser)

WebXPRT 2015 (Stock Browser)

Kraken 1.1 (Chrome/Safari/IE)

Google Octane v2  (Chrome/Safari/IE)

There are two things we can immediately take away from these results. The first is that currently Google Chrome is incredibly unoptimized for Kryo, and this is something Qualcomm was also quick to mention. We won’t wax on about this as there’s nothing to say we haven’t said before, but Chrome could certainly stand to implement optimized JS engines sooner.

Otherwise if we look at Qualcomm’s native browser, things are greatly improved. Relative to both the Exynos 7420 (A57) powered Note 5 and the Snapdragon 810 (A57) powered Mi Note Pro, the MDP/S shows a significant lead. In fact it pretty much blows past those devices in Kraken. However while it easily takes the top spot for an Android device, even with Qualcomm’s native browser the 820 isn’t going to be able to catch up to the iPhone 6s Plus and its A9 SoC.

Basemark OS II 2.0 - Overall

Basemark OS II 2.0 - System

Basemark OS II 2.0 - Memory

Basemark OS II 2.0 - Graphics

Basemark OS II 2.0 - Web

Basemark OS II 2.0 on the other hand is less consistent. The overall score again pegs the MDP/S as the best Android device, and by over 20%. However for reasons yet to be determined, the system score is still below the latest Samsung devices. Instead where the 820 shows a clear lead is with the storage (memory) score and the graphics score. In some cases it’s even beating the iPhone 6s Plus, though overall it will fall short.

PCMark - Work Performance Overall

PCMark - Web Browsing

PCMark - Video Playback

PCMark - Writing

PCMark - Photo Editing

Our final system benchmark, PCMark, once again puts the MDP/S in a good light overall, while the individual sub-tests are more widely varied. Likely owing to the same optimization issues that dogged Chrome performance, web browsing performance trails the A57 devices. Meanwhile video playback closely trails the Snapdragon 810 powered HTC One M9, and writing performance won’t quite surpass the Galaxy S6. Where the 820 MDP/S makes up for it is in the photo editing score, which is through the roof. Here Qualcomm’s development device holds a 34% performance lead over the next-fastest device, the 810/A57 based Mi Note Pro.

CPU Performance: Meet Kryo GPU Performance
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  • extide - Thursday, December 10, 2015 - link

    Dude, it has half as many cores. It's a 2+2 design vs a 4+4 design. The fact that is is able to stay close in INteger and actually win in all but one test in FP is actually really good.

    Although it kinda makes me wish they did a 3+3 design, but oh well, maybe they will in the future.
  • saratoga4 - Thursday, December 10, 2015 - link

    Got to save something for the Snapdragon 825 a year later.
  • alex3run - Friday, December 11, 2015 - link

    A9 has still worse CPU performance than Exynos 7420.
  • techconc - Wednesday, December 16, 2015 - link

    How so?
  • Thermogenic - Thursday, December 10, 2015 - link

    What I'm gathering from these charts is that every 2016 Android smartphone will have lesser performance than the 2015 iPhone, unless Samsung pulls some magic out of their hat with the next version of their chipset.
  • tuxRoller - Thursday, December 10, 2015 - link

    Yes, but so what? Apple had had better cpus for several years now. Nothing new here.
    The more interesting thing is that despite that, Android is still able to keep up with the "highly optimized" "vertically integrated" ios with flagships when it comes to everyday tasks.
  • MykeM - Thursday, December 10, 2015 - link

    http://www.xda-developers.com/marshmallow-reduces-...
  • tuxRoller - Friday, December 11, 2015 - link

    ....and? I'm aware of android's latency issues (their touch latency is...not good ether).
  • jasonelmore - Friday, December 11, 2015 - link

    what good is the performance if it's a sandboxed phone? cant carry around files on the phone, use it as portable computer with flash drive option.
  • Constructor - Saturday, December 12, 2015 - link

    That has never been true for iOS either. I've been doing that with my respective iPhones for years by now.

    There are multiple options for that, but I personally use GoodReader as my generic file system manager on my iPhone and on my iPad. I can expose my files as a mountable network drive and I can also mount remote drives as well. I can also access files on DropBox and similar services from apps directly if I want.

    This is not a real issue – nowadays it's mostly just a myth propagated among people who don't know better.

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